Fabric Store Fun and Curly Camicas

Well, over the weekend I hit the fabric store sale as promised. I cleaned up on thread. I bought all sorts of colors. Just in case....

I also got a liner for the inside of my dress bodice, a hideous 50 cent/yard fabric with teal checkers to use while drafting patterns (so i don't waste my good fabric), and some pink lightweight cotton shirting for any random use I come up with.

My other big find was 8 yards of a dark olive fabric to make a "practice dress." It was $1/yd. I have decided (and it has been pointed out) that I have almost zero experience drafting patterns. So, I am planning on doing a practice "courtesan" dress. This will be with the olive fabric. Its a poly/rayon blend, so kinda eh (not authentic), but it'll be good for practice and feels similar to my velvet weight/texture wise for good practice. The olive is plain olive on the back side, and diamond striped olive on the front side. I think I will use the plan side for most of the dress, and perhaps a bit of the diamonds for accent (maybe on the front of the bodice and around the bottom of the dress). Anywho, here are my new fabric finds:


fabricfinds--silky burgundy is for lining my velvet dress bodice, hideous teal checks is for pattern drafting, olive is for my practice Italian gown, and pale pink is cuz it was 50cents a yard and it might be good for something....

Other than that, I found that Simplicity patterns were on sale for a dollar each, so I bought two of them. #8881 is the Elizabethan dress pattern. I may try to use this pattern to loosely base my own bodice pattern on. the necline is basically correct, and I'll just have to tweak it toadd back side lacing, and fix the waistline so it is more Venetian (change the point in the front and add one in the back). The other pattern is #5794. It is a cloak. I will make it if I'm feeling luxurious. Particulary since my existing cloak may be sacrificed and recycled to be part of my red velvet courtesan dress. It is a dark mauvy pink, and may find itselft cut into strips of trim for the dress...




So, the cloak I currently have is the pink on the top with the black finishing stitches. While I love the cape's fit and style, I often complain that I do not want the pink cape (I made it in highschool). I am faced with a dilemma. It matches pretty well. Do I kill my pink cape to make fabric strips for guard trims on my red velvet dress? Or do I keep the pink cloak intact because, hey, it does match my dress....?

Also, since I got new thread I was able to work on my camica more. I hemmed all the edges (top, sleeve and bottom). One of my thread purchases was a silky rayon thread in a golden tone. With this I bound the edges of the sleeves and neckline to produce the "frill" effect I have previously referred to:

Palma Vecchio: La Violante

I think my edges turned out very well. I've got a closeup of the curling edge in gold, and a whole pic of the camica as it is now.


I think this is as far as I will go on the camica until the dress is finished. I have quickly gathered the neckline for this pic just to see how the effect worked. But i do not want to permanently gather the neckline until I know what the shape and size of the dress's neckline will be. Basically, I want my camica top to *just* peek over the dress. So, finishing the camica will be put on hold until much later. I also plan on gathering my camica sleeves. This will be done at the same time as the neckline so I don't screw up and end up doing them somehow differently....